NZ

Week 12 | Day 2 | PSYA02

-– Continuing from last lecture —

The Diathesis-Stress Model

Diathesis-Stress Model: The idea that both genes and stressful situations team up to cause mental and physical illnesses

  • Plasticity versus vulnerability factor

Pathways from Stress to Mental and Physical Disease

Chronic inflammation: prolonged exposure to inflammatory proteins can lead to cell death and tissue damage

Biological aging: Older cells unable to divorce or function

  • Increased risk for diseases of aging (eg. cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders)

General Adaptation Syndrome

  • Repeated, chronic stress causes a constant stress response
  • This constant stress response can result in Generation Adaptation Syndrome
  1. Alarm Phase
  • Individual healthy reaction to stress
  1. Resistance Phase
  • Body adapts to high stress; non-stress-related processes are shut down (like sleep)
  1. Exhaustion Phase
  • Body cannot cope with other processes being shut down. Illness, death, or injury can occur

Reducing Stress and Enhancing Resilience

  • There are behaviours you can engage in to protect yourself from the negative effects of stress
  • These behaviours can have direct effects on health outcomes and stress-buffering effects
    • Enhance resilience to stressors

To improve resilience:

  • Engage in physically active lifestyle
  • Healthy sleep schedule
  • Healthy diet
  • Maintain social support
  • Use relaxation techniques

– New lecture –

Sex :(

  • Biologically determined
    • Genes, hormones, genetics
  • Examples
    • Males, females, intersex

Gender

  • Gender
    • Psychologically and societally determined
    • Related to biology, but not determined by it
    • Spectral, multifaceted

Gender roles: cultural expectations as to how women and men should look and act

Gender identity: whether a person subjectively feels like a woman or a man

Terminology

Cisgender: gender identity matches biological sex at birth

Transgender: identity that differs from biological sex at birth

Gender Non-Binary: don’t identify as either male or female

Transgender woman: male at birth, gender identity is woman

Transgender man: female at birth, man as gender

Gender dysphoria: distress brought about by having a gender identity that doesn’t match one’s biological sex

  • Often helped by hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery